Category: Birds

I’ve been posting on my Instagram account (outdoorhourchallenge) the monthly list of birds we observe from our window and in our backyard. But, it appears I haven’t really talked about our bird visitors for some time here on the blog.  So in conjunction with or instead of the Baltimore oriole nature study from last week, I’ll be sharing some of our bird stories and the list too!

As you can see from the list, we had a huge variety of birds visit during the month of May.

Birds that Visit the Feeders

• Northern flicker
• House finches – They are seen in the feeder but also on the lawn as they eat the puffs of dandelion seeds that get left behind by the mower.
• California scrub jays
• Red-winged blackbirds
• Pygmy nuthatches
• Mountain chickadees – We have two nesting boxes with chickadee nests. I saw a mama bird fly out of the box, land on the sidewalk, pick up some ants, and then fly back up to the nest. What a good mama!
• Yellow-headed blackbirds – I’ve learned the sort of mechanical sound of these colorful birds that will sit high up in our pine trees. They visit the feeder occasionally.  Here’s a link to what they sound like: All About Birds.
• Evening grosbeaks
• Western bluebirds – We have a nesting box full of bluebirds in our yard!
• Black-headed grosbeaks
• Hairy woodpeckers
• Steller’s jays
• Western tanager – This is a new bird to our list! It’s such a beautiful and colorful bird that appeared one morning. Then, by afternoon, we had 5 males and 2 females at our feeders. I haven’t seen them in a few weeks so I guess they have moved on.
• Rufous hummingbirds – They seem to have come and gone. I anticipate that they’ll return again soon.

 Birds that Eat under the Feeders

• Mourning doves
• Brewer’s blackbirds
• American robins – We have a nest up on our bbq shed. The mama very dutifully sits on the nest day after day. I looked it up and incubation is 12-14 days so she must be getting close to hatching the babies.
• White-crowned sparrows
• Dark-eyed juncos
• California quail

Birds that Fly By

• Tree swallows – There is a swallow nest in one of our nesting boxes. I love watching the swallows fly and dive and swoop in my yard as they eat mosquitoes! I wish they would eat them all!
• Osprey
• Snipe
• Canada goose
• Mallard ducks – There’s a duck family with about a dozen babies on the pond behind our house. There is nothing sweeter than a little duckling.
• Common raven
• Turkey vultures
• Great blue herons – We observed three herons flying behind our house a few nights ago. That’s a record number of heron being seen all at one time.
• Cooper’s hawk – He is a fierce predator and we’ve seen him chasing birds from our feeder several times. He is fast and flies so agilely.

 Is your family looking for a resource to use to learn more about your backyard birds? You should take a look at my Learning About Birds ebook that is available to both Ultimate and Journey level members here on the Handbook of Nature Study.

Here are the specifics:

• This 65 page digital ebook has 8 challenges and supplemental activities that will help you learn more about your local birds using the Handbook of Nature Study as well as the book, Backyard Birds. (See the Amazon.com store for the bird related resources.)
• There are 6 notebooking pages included in the ebook. Two of these are general bird study pages that can be printed multiple times to meet your family’s needs.
• Full color photos of every bird included in the ebook.
• Additional information on birdfeeders, bird seed, nature table ideas, life lists, field guide help, and online identification.
• There is enough material in this ebook to provide 8 weeks of bird study or more depending on how long you take to complete each challenge. Every challenge has more than one bird – see list of birds included below.
• The ebook contains a chart that links every bird discussed in the Handbook of Nature Study (the book) to a challenge here on the website. This chart will help you find the bird challenges found in other OHC ebooks as well as the corresponding notebooking pages (if available).
• Sample: Print your ebook sample here: Learning About Birds from the Outdoor Hour Challenge.

Use the discount code BIRDLOVER5 for $5 off an Ultimate Naturalist membership here on the Handbook of Nature Study.